I don’t normally write up Agatha Christie books because while each story is different, the general structure is the same, and it’s not like there’s anything new to say about Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple, or even Colonel Hastings or Inspector Japp, for that matter. Taken at the Flood
One is that despite the fact that the book – also published as There is a Tide, both titles coming from a speech by Brutus in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar – is a Hercule Poirot novel, the man we all know and love doesn’t appear until past the halfway point, outside of a very brief cameo in the prologue. Christie spends the first 60% of the book setting the scene for the first murder, walking us through all the key characters, showing us their motives (in whole or in part), and then following the initial investigation before Poirot finally makes his entrance. I can understand Dame Christie wanting to change it up a little bit, but I happen to like the pompous little Belgian, and I thought his absence took something away from the book, which had a clever plot and a twist in the resolution that I haven’t seen in another Christie novel.
The other unusual facet of Taken at the Flood was what seemed to me to be some sort of political commentary, something I don’t normally associate with Christie’s novels. The plot revolves around the family of a wealthy man who, as a lifelong bachelor, had supported most of them and made grand promises of future support for their own professional endeavors, like expanding the family farm or conducting clinical research instead of working as a family physician. The uncle, Gordon, married while abroad on a trip, only to be killed shortly thereafter in an air raid on London, leaving his young wife a widow in control of his entire fortune, and his expectant heirs out of luck and often in dire straits. I could be reading too much into it, but I thought Gordon was a metaphor for the government and his heirs stood in for people who lived on the dole or otherwise expected to the government to bail them out of their difficulties or, in one character’s case, make working for a living unnecessary. Christie also included several shots at the British government’s taxation schemes during World War II that first gave me the idea that she might be offering a broader comment. Your mileage may vary.
I was pleased to have, for a change, caught two of the most significant clues and pieced together about half of the solution, but once again was far from getting the whole thing. The fun’s in the reading for me, although I do try to form something more than a wild guess as to the killer’s identity and motive. The twist in this one made that quite a bit more difficult than normal.
This marked the 500th novel I’ve read so far, sixteen of which were by Dame Christie.
Next review: Dawn Powell’s The Wicked Pavilion
